The German Patent DE-PS No. 30 18 771 describes a mixing valve employing a sphere movably supported in a hemispherical socket which has the supply lines for hot and cold water and the discharge line for the mixture. The sphere is supported in the socket in such a manner that a movement about two axes perpendicular to each other is permitted in order to control the flow volume and the mixing ratio. Connected to the sphere is a hand lever which extends radially outwardly through a slot within the outer jacket of the valve housing to allow actuation of the sphere by an operator.
Apart from the fact that the visual appearance of such a mixing valve is not attractive, because the slot is exposed towards the outside, the prior art has the further drawback that the slot covers a substantial part of the length of the jacket because the hand lever also is required to be moved in horizontal direction along a substantial way in order to provide the control of the sphere.
It is also known to provide mixing valves with valve disks encased within a valve housing portion and with a hand lever which projects into the housing. The hand lever is fixedly connected to a lid which surrounds a correspondingly provided top portion of the valve housing. Due to the fixed connection between the lid and the hand lever, the swinging and gyratory or undulating motions of the hand lever are necessarily transmitted to the lid. This however, is undesirable as the visual appearance of the mixing valve is impaired. Excessively exposed slot lengths also lead to contamination of the interior of the valve with concomitant danger of interference with operation and sanitary problems.